To say the behaviour crisis in schools can't just be blamed on parenting

[Sendcrisis2025]

I speak as a mum of two children with EHCPs and someone who is a SENDIASS officer, name changed to protect my identity/job.

There is a strong rhetoric from the teaching unions this week about behaviour in schools and poor parenting. No mention of the bigger picture, just poor parenting.

My DC are 10 and 8, just two years behind them. When DC1 was a toddler there was a huge range of groups, support, targeted interventions through the local sure start centre. These were already being cut by the time my DC2 was a toddler. Then covid happened and the services and groups have just not returned. There is no early support anymore.

One of my DC is a challenge in school, fortuantly she is predominantly a flight risk rather than violent but still a behavioural challenge. We have had one physical incident where she shoved a teacher. Pure combination of factors that had led to DC being enclosed within a corner by several children and with nowhere to escape to she shoved to escape. Unacceptable but that was the reasoning of why and she was suspended for two days etc. She struggles to cope with the sensory demands of mainstream. Too many children, too much going on. They fly through the content whereas she likes to master things in depth before moving on. Too many low level behavioural issues like children who just don't ever stop talking. She can't navigate social dynamics. None of this DC can cope with. There is a lack of consistency in the school day and the routines. None of this is the school's fault but realistically how it is in every mainstream school. We are struggling to get her moved to a specialist setting. She has no learning needs and generally with the one exception, she isnt violent so the SEMH schools are not appropriate either.

My other DC would never dream of acting out, is not a behavioural issue at all despite his needs.

Based on the unions DC is entirely due to my poor parenting. It doesnt matter that DC2 is a behavioural dream. It doesnt matter that I have no behavioural issues with DC1 at home where it is quiet, the same rigid routine for the past 6 years and less social demands. It doesnt matter that she is in a completely wrong setting.

In my LA there are over 400 children like my DC1 who have specialist agreed but are stuck in mainstream with no setting to go to. There is nowhere for them to go. These are the children with specialist agreed by the LA. This doesn't include the many hundreds more who don't have specialist agreed or don't even have EHCPs yet.

Our health trust is on 3+ years for an initial appointment. CAMHs are almost non-existent. You are only considered for medication if you are already a behavioural problem in school, it doesn't matter if a child has severe ADHD until they are at the point they can no longer cope and it is at crisis point.

Early help, if accepted, offers 6 weeks of support. There is a huge gap between early help and child in need.

I speak to parents day in day out at work who are desperate for help as their children can not cope at school.

There will always be poorly behaved children due to poor parents but the majority? The majority are children who simply cannot cope in the setting they are in with nowhere to go to.

Over 400 children in my LA with specialist agreed but stuck in mainstream. That is an incredible number.

I know my DC spends 8.45am-2pm in a small cupboard with a 1-1 TA. She joins a much younger year group for the last hour a day. She does 95% of her schoolwork with me at home.

but it can be true that parental expectations/entitlements are too high. I don’t doubt that your dd would fly under the absolute perfect Teaching environment for her. But unfortunately there are 8 million other children who also need a bespoke learning environment. It isn’t financially possible.

Your dc clearly has special needs so of course that has nothing to do with parenting. However so many children are being brought up without structure or boundaries and without being taught basic manners. I also think many parents do not respect schools or teachers and their DCs are picking up on it and are therefore not respecting teachers in the classroom.

I don't think the unions were talking specifically about children with SEN.

From what I read they talked about a crisis due to social media and smartphones. They also spoke of aggressive parents and parents who didn't support teachers.

Try not to take what the unions say seriously.

There is a definite unspoken rule that the different services don’t slag each other off. For example they wouldn’t blame social services for not monitoring parents who need support because SS are like education and firefighting due to lack of resources. Going after other services is going to bite them in the arse at a future date.

Of course there’s multiple reasons why behaviour in schools is poor. Parenting is a convenient stick to use because there’s no person speaking on behalf of all parents who can point to other issues in education.

There are more children with SEN which is contributing to problems in schools, but I don’t think that’s the only issue the unions are referring to. The increase in ‘gentle parenting’ has led to children who lack boundaries and the increase in screen time has reduced their physical ability and emotional and social development. And of course lockdown had a huge impact, which is being ignored because no one wants to admit that lockdown was the wrong decision for the most important people in society.

It’s a shameful state of affairs if the only way we as a society can bring up NT children properly is if we have endless early years support provided by government.

I do think the state should be doing significantly more to support children with SEN, especially in the early years, but not everything is the state’s responsibility. Parents have access to plenty of opportunity and resources if they want them.

I don't believe for a minute that the teaching unions have blamed bad behaviour in schools entirely on poor parenting.

The school atmosphere and curriculum could be improved, absolutely. I’m all in favour of cost effective, good-of-the-majority changes which will make school life and learning better overall for children.

But there is no more money for SEN. On average households are making a £150 payment to social care per month through their council tax, and that doesn’t take into account the cost of DLA, SEN schools, hospital appointments and therapies from the core budget taxation. Contrary to popular opinion we have far more SEN places now than 20 years ago, with huge waiting lists. The places are astronomically expensive. I know of some placements which cost tens of thousands per week for 1 child.

No idea what the answer is but a bespoke education for half of kids just isn’t financially possible.

Plus before any child with SEMH issues gets a referral to CAMHS, they should have college confiscation of screens, gaming and junk food for 3 months.

I think parenting these days has swung from being largely authoritarian 60s/79s/80s to progressively more permissive 90s/00/10/20. Authoritarian is very damaging and it was bad parenting but behaviour wise it did focus on control, permissive parenting breeds entitlement and poor behaviour. There is a happy medium that hopefully the next generation might hit.

I think we hit the sweet spot from 90s-2000s.

I think the loss of playing out and the rise of screens has been catastrophic for children’s MH.

I blame screens and not enough time spent outdoors expending energy

Personally, I thinkas a society, we have decided that both parents need to work outside the home to be able to afford materialistic things. Parents feed their kids crap food as they don’t have time to cook as they’re exhausted after a full day at work and want to spend time on their sofas with their phones. Because of this kids aren’t getting ‘practical’ time to learn things by their parents. Also the fact that there seems to be no boundaries in place which means kids can do whatever they want doesn’t help as they think rules don’t apply to them.
teachers are being asked to adapt teaching for everyone but still need to cover the curriculum in less time with fewer resources. The “able kids” are not helped in school as the teacher has to spend more time helping the ‘difficult/disruptive/SEN/ECHP/non English speaking” kids rather then pushing the able ones to be better.
Lack of resources in education mainly account for this.
Add in kids who aren’t toilet trained, parents who feel that school is ‘childcare’ and their lack of respect then this is what you get.

Agreed.

There are about 3 posts a day in our local FB group for parents (large town) asking for advice on autism/ADHD diagnosis. In every case the symptoms are ‘they have violent tantrums and don’t want to do anything but game/YouTube on the tablet’.

It amazes me that rather than ask questions about screen time and diet, the answer is always an ASD/ADHD assessment.

I think the unions are talking more about neurotypical, zero educational needs children. Whose behaviour is massively disrespectful and disruptive. I teach many like this and my (state!) school is excellent. We get a lot of children whose parents leave their child with the housekeeper or relatives to go away on holiday or with work a lot. Throw lots of money at them, spoil them, but not a lot of hands-on actual parenting. Or even just lazy parenting generally and let the children do what they want. I have sat in lots of meetings where parents are begging for help with their child, but at any suggestion of removing the Xbox, phone etc, we are met with horrified refusal.

I think children (and adults) are less able to tolerate boredom and school can be a bit boring. Unfortunately so can work.

I think a lot of children's behaviour would improve massively if they had no screens, whole foods rather than processed , no fizzy drinks and were taken to the park every day. That's not to say sn don't exist or could all be solved by this obviously.

CAMHS is overwhelmed, and actual suicide attempts aren't always a good enough reason to be seen by them. Most of the behavioural issues you're talking about might get a referral if you can persuade your GP, but are likely to be turned down without an assessment.

I spoke to our GP a few weeks ago because DS has been talking about harming himself and wanting to die. GP can't do anything, which is why I'd put off contacting them while I looked at other options. There was a fantastic local group for young people who self harm but that's gone as the parent organisation had to make cuts. We're trying out a local mental health & wellbeing drop-in that is funded by CAMHS/the Health Board.

And if they are in crisis? Or ASD and will only eat certain foods?

And it wasn’t any if those things that did my ASD dd in. It was an overly strict, overly controlled school environment and too much pressure about targets.

Agreed.

But suicides have consistently decreased since the 1980s. We may have more teens threatening suicide or saying they have suicidal feelings, but actual suicides have gone down:

Over the past 15 years, the UK rate of suicide among 15-24 year olds has gradually fallen, but rose again in 2018 – although this be partly due to a change in coronial standards rather than a true rise. Between 1992 and 2017, the UK rate of suicide per 100,000 young people aged 15-24, decreased from 10.7 to 7.3, but rose to 9.1 in 2018 – a total of 714 registered deaths

So why is this happening despite worsening MH and MH services?

The places that cost tens of thousands per week are independent specialists. Independent specialists have exploded to take over a void created by not enough maintained specialist settings being available. Our LA has a handful of LA run places at around £30000 per year. If they opened more LA run settings they'd get the cost down considerably. It's hard to have sympathy when it was entirely foreseeable when they closes lots of maintained settings.

Additionally, our LA wanted to open around 80 places in satellites September 2024. 12 opened on time. A further 24 have opened in the 7 months since. 36/80 planned places. There is a school site they are planning to be a LA maintained setting. Years it has been going round in circles. Meanwhile Independent settings are created and popping up within a year. Again, it is hard to have sympathy as this was entirely preventable.

I think children are a reflection of the society they live in.

Our society is going through a tough time. There is increasing inequality and lower investment in public provision, especially for young people as a group. There is some provision for individuals 'in need' but I think we need to focus more on provision that everyone can access. There is poor behaviour and role modelling in adults so that is what the children learn.

You want children to do better, you need to start with the adults and then the children will follow.

I think your child is a slightly different case as they have SEN - although, it must be incredibly difficult for teachers to be trying to manage this kind of behaviour while meeting the rest of the class’s needs.

I think in schools where bad behaviour is a problem, it probably does begin with the parents. They don’t respect authority, they dont respect the teachers or the value of education, they speak to each other in negative ways as the norm etc etc.

I think this too having read many social worker reports.

This^^

Poor parenting is an issue with many of the children in school who exhibit poor behaviour (this isn’t always related to SEND). Children have language and speaking difficulties-many not due to SEND, but because they have been stuck in front of a screen and no one spends time talking with them. Same with learning to share and play with others. They don’t have experience of it.

Add in waiting lists for outside agencies and the quite frankly immoral way that local authorities are working within SEND, with limited spaces in special schools, you create a maelstrom of issues.

I remember my ds during his pre school and primary school years especially would be climbing the walls at home, he needed a huge amount of physical exercise...I took him out every single day...I stood in goal on Christmas day in the rain while he booted a football at me 😂I think we have lost sight of what children should be doing. Many can't sit still and quietly at home...that is normal isn't it?